Ben Davies is off and another Liverpool defender could follow suit. Are the Reds gambling? 🎲

It's awfully risky after the last season, isn't it?

Liverpool’s announcement that Ben Davies would leave on loan was met by some predictable comments from fans, of the ‘Ben Davies who?’ variety.

It’s a decision that one can sympathise with given the mouth-watering array of talent on offer just in the centre of defence alone from Virgil van Dijk to Ibrahima Konate.

The former Preston North End defender remains something of an unknown, having not featured in the famous red shirt beyond a pre-season clash against Osasuna.

Yet, if one were to pit him against fellow backup option Nathaniel Phillips for any spare minutes with the first-team, we would expect few to back the 26-year-old against his Liverpool teammate.

Regardless, it does leave the club one defender down, which may yet be further compounded by the potential exit of the ‘Bolton Baresi’.

“Still no suitable offers on the table,” James Pearce wrote for The Athletic in response to a fan question regarding Phillips’s future. “I’m still expecting him to leave before the window shuts.”

Of course, it’s more than possible that all this concern is merely carry-on from our injury-hit 2020/21 campaign.

After all, we’ve already seen some positive early signs in the department of central defence, with Virgil van Dijk surprising fans by playing the full 90 minutes against Norwich City yesterday.

The Dutchman looked off the pace on occasion but was otherwise a solid presence as ever in the backline alongside Joel Matip.

On the flip side of the coin, however, it’s extremely difficult to overlook just how injury prone some of our centre-halves have been over the years.

Our beloved Cameroonian, in particular, has hardly been the poster boy for durability.

Joe Gomez, likewise, has spent more than his fair share of time on the sidelines, albeit more out of bad luck it seems than anything else.

Freak seasons, as our last campaign undeniably was, can happen, of course.

So, it’s just as possible that Liverpool could go through this year without having much in the way of issues.

Van Dijk alone has generally proven more or less reliable and the addition of Ibrahima Konate in the summer window won’t have harmed our chances either.

Nonetheless, it’s difficult to shake off the feeling (related to the last term as it may be) that we’ve gambled on holding on to Nathaniel Phillips when sending out Ben Davies on loan.

Should the Englishman end up leaving Anfield before the window closes, we certainly won’t hold it against him given the limited amount of minutes he’s likely to benefit from in Merseyside.

However, we’ll be keeping our fingers crossed that his potential exit won’t mean Liverpool have gambled poorly.

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